Zeppelin Blitz

by Neil Storey

  Five minutes later she dropped her first bomb at Bylaugh Park, where there was a Yeomanry Camp in which lights were showing. Böcker brought L-14 down lower, circled the camp and dropped one HE bomb that fell 150 yards from the camp and a further fourteen incendiary bombs. They did no damage and caused no casualties beyond a cow. They also dropped a German officer’s cap (or it was knocked/blown off?), and a parachute was found in a meadow at Scarning; the latter contained German newspapers and a leave pass dated Nordholz, 7 September 1915, signed by Oberleutnant zur See Frankenberg, L-14. Frankenberg was second in command of the airship.

  At 8.55 p.m. L-14 was over East Dereham. Böcker was aware that he had flown to the centre of the county and, believing he was over Norwich, he dropped his entire load of twenty-four HE and sixteen incendiary bombs, causing the most severe air raid casualties inflicted upon the county during the war.

  L-14 swept over the town from the direction of Scarning. The first four bombs dropped on Church Farm meadows causing little more damage than blasting a gate by a barley stack and blowing the leaves off a hedge, but it did cause the patients in the East Dereham Auxiliary War Hospital to run out in their night attire and investigate what was going on. The next three bombs landed on marshy meadows, blowing out stinking black mud over a large area.

  The next bombs were increasingly serious; one landed on the roadway near the Guildhall, leaving a crater 6ft across and 4ft deep and bringing down part of the Guildhall outbuildings, badly damaging the roof of the infant school on the opposite side of the road and smashing some of the glass in the church windows.

  The worst damage was caused by the bombs dropped on Church Street. The premises of H.H. Aldiss on the High Street corner were almost completely wrecked; the windows of the King’s Arms and Cave’s Photographers were blasted in; and the White Lion pub was so badly damaged that it never opened again and two patrons, Mr Harry and Mrs Sylvia Johnson, were badly injured. In this upper area of the street, the body of Lance Corporal Alfred Pomeroy was found – his left leg, abdomen and pelvis horribly mangled from the blast. Parts of his body were found on the roof of a building next to the Corn Hall. Mr James Taylor was passing along the top of Church Street to post a letter when the bomb landed. His body was found lying in the road near the National Provincial Bank ‘shot in the abdomen by a piece of shell case.’

  Kapitänleutnant der Reserve Alois Böcker

  Cave’s Photographers, the White Lion pub and other premises damaged during the air raid on Church Street, East Dereham, on 8 September 1915.

  The frontage of Hamerton’s grocery shop was blown out and cottages in White Lion Yard were badly damaged, one of them collapsing on top of its occupants, Mr and Mrs Taylor. On the opposite side of the road, many houses were scarred by the flying shrapnel and the orderly rooms of 5th Battalion, Norfolk Regiment TF, had its windows shattered and the roof smashed. The body of Harry Patterson was found in the entrance of the headquarters building of the battalion, a piece of steel shell casing having penetrated his chest.

  The Corn Hall had its glass roof smashed and a bomb fell on a nearby house, demolishing it. The occupant, Mr Catton, had heard the commotion outside and ran out to investigate as a soldier ran inside to take shelter; he was extracted alive from the collapsed building but died later from his injuries. The bank also had its windows smashed, along with the Alexander family memorial windows in the Cowper Memorial Church.

  The Zeppelin then swept away towards Bayfield Hall leaving a trail of bombs along the way, most of which fell on farm and estate land. But then, ominously, the Zeppelin turned again and made another pass over Dereham.

  On this second run an incendiary was dropped on Bradley’s Ironmongers in the Market Place, setting fire to the oil store and adjacent cartridge store which began exploding the ammunition in the intense heat. The fire brigade was summoned with the firing of maroons, and immediately the fire broke out at Bradley’s, Mr Herbert Leech, who had a men’s outfitting business at the other end of the Market Place, ran to the King’s Arms Hotel where the maroons were kept. He found all the occupants down in the cellar and, as bombs were falling rapidly, nobody answered his request for the maroons to be fired. Eventually he was given the key to the outbuilding where the maroons were kept. Mr Leech enlisted the assistance of a passing soldier and they got the maroons out. He knew nothing about firing them and actually held the match in his hand whilst lighting the fuse! When the first maroon was fired the soldier rolled over amongst the cabbages in the garden and bolted. Mr Leech fired the second maroon as the Zeppelin was hanging directly overhead and it immediately fled. The Zeppelin’s departure was attributed by many to Mr Leech’s courage, and for this he was complimented by military officers and prominent people of the town.

  The blast-damaged headquarters of 5th Battalion, Norfolk Regiment TF, on Church Street, East Dereham, after the raid of 8 September 1915. The body of Harry Patterson was found in the entrance, with a piece of steel shell casing having penetrated his chest.

  Bomb-damaged cottages in White Lion Yard, East Dereham, after the raid of 8 September 1915.

  The blast-damaged East Dereham Corn Hall (right) and nearby houses that received a direct hit, which fatally wounded a soldier sheltering inside during the raid of 8 September 1915.

  The casualties were:

  Killed:

  Harry Patterson (44), watchmaker and jeweller, High Street, Dereham.

  Lance Corporal Alfred Edward Pomeroy, 2/1st City of London Yeomanry (Rough Riders).

  James Taylor (61), an earthenware, china and general dealer, 27 High Street, Dereham.

  Died of Wounds:

  Pte Leslie Frank McDonald, 2/1st City of London Yeomanry (Rough Riders).

  Pte H.G. Parkinson, 2/1st City of London Yeomanry (Rough Riders).

  Injured:

  Miss Dawson, Scarning Fen – injury to ankle.

  Mr and Mrs Johnson, Baxter’s Row, Dereham – wounded by shrapnel.

  Pte A.W. Quinton, London Mounted Brigade Field Ambulance RAMC – wounded in leg.

  Mr and Mrs Taylor, White Lion Yard, Dereham – injured by house collapsing on them.

  At about 9 p.m. the raiding Zeppelin went off in a north-easterly direction towards Fakenham, was at North Elmham at 9.10 p.m., passed Ryburgh and Pensthorpe, and at 9.30 p.m. was near Walsingham again, where she seems to have turned off eastward towards Holt and back across the sea.

  Three planes from RNAS Great Yarmouth were sent to hunt down L-14, but tragically each drew a negative. Two had lucky escapes, but the third pilot was not so fortunate. Squadron Commander C.W.P. Ireland was first in the air at 7.45 p.m. but he was back less than ten minutes later when his patrol was cut short after four of his engine cylinders cracked. Flight Lieutenant J.M.R. Cripps was in the air at 7.50 p.m. and he too had a remarkable escape when his engine spluttered to a stop half way through his patrol. He could see no landing area, so allowed his BE-2c to glide down and he threw himself clear just before it landed. He was unhurt, and his aircraft came down with only minor damage – both man and plane had landed on the Caister Marshes.

  After a two-hour sortie patrolling between Cromer and Lowestoft, Flight Sub Lieutenant G.W. Hilliard was attempting to land at the night landing ground at Bacton. Despite the flares being lit on the runway, Hilliard misjudged his approach and touched down heavily in an adjoining field. His BE-2c’s undercarriage collapsed, his bombs exploded in their frames and he was killed instantly. This brave 30-year-old pilot was buried with full RNAS honours in Great Yarmouth (Caister) Cemetery.

  LZ-77, commanded by Hauptmann Horn, never came overland. The airship appeared at Dunwich at about 8.40 p.m., then went south and dropped eight HE bombs near the Galloper lightship at 9.30 p.m. The airship is then thought to have gone to the Straits of Dover, and was last seen off Walmer going east at 10.40 p.m.

  The total estimated damage caused by the raid was £534,287.

  The full RNAS Honours funeral cortège of Flight Sub Lieutenant G.W. Hilliard passes
along Lancaster Road, Great Yarmouth, September 1915.

  HIPPISLEY HUT

  High on the cliffs at Old Hunstanton in Norfolk, not far from the lighthouse, was a secret installation colloquially known as the ‘Hippisley Hut’, and therein lies one of the stories of the country’s forgotten heroes of the First World War.

  Richard John Bayntun Hippisley was born in 1865 to a landed family, blessed with exceptional talents in engineering and science – his grandfather had been a Fellow of the Royal Society.

  Bayntun, as he liked to be known, began as an apprentice at the Thorn Engineering Company, where he learned about mechanical and electrical engineering. He was gazetted Second Lieutenant in the North Somerset Yeomanry in July 1888, and Honorary Lieutenant Colonel in 1908, and was awarded the Territorial Decoration.

  Bayntun was an early pioneer of radio research, and worked at a wireless station on the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall, where he had picked up messages from the sinking Titanic. In 1913 he was appointed a member of the Parliamentary Commission of Wireless for the War Office Committee on Wireless Telegraphy.

  Sir James Alfred Ewing (formerly the Director of Naval Education and Professor of Engineering at Cambridge), was the newly appointed manager of ‘Room 40’, the Admiralty Intelligence department of cryptanalysis, and was keen to obtain skilled recruits in the comparatively new field of wireless communications – and interception.

  In September 1914, Bayntun and barrister Edward Russell Clarke, a prominent amateur wireless expert, called at the Admiralty and informed Ewing that they were receiving messages on a lower wavelength than any being received by existing Marconi stations. The German fleet was using these low wavelengths, and Ewing immediately obtained permission for Bayntun and Clarke to set up a station at Hunstanton in Norfolk.

  When they arrived at the coastguard station at Hunstanton, they found a wooden mast with no aerial but, with a little ingenuity, they were soon intercepting signals. The area around the lighthouse and across the immediate farmland was designated a ‘prohibited area’ and by 1915 a maze of wireless masts stretched across the cliff top. These were controlled from within the lighthouse, which became a miniature wireless monitoring station, listening in to German Navy and airship radio traffic around the clock.

  Lieutenant Commander R.J.B. Hippisley RNVR initially lived in the Le Strange Arms Hotel, then took over the old wooden clubhouse of the Old Hunstanton Town golf links and a wooden bungalow adjacent to the Cromer Road, where he installed another wireless device. The bungalow has now been replaced with a brick residence but still retains the First World War nom de plume of the ‘Hippisley Hut.’

  Lieutenant Commander Hippisley eventually set up a string of listening posts across the British Isles and abroad. The German Navy were confident that they could not be heard and never made any attempt to conceal their wireless traffic. It was these stations that picked up the unusual amount of traffic from Wilhelmshaven, which warned the Admiralty that the Imperial German fleet was putting to sea before the Battle of Jutland.

  When the Zeppelin raids intensified in 1916, fears that the wireless stations would become targets led the Admiralty to send a shallow draught monitor, HMS Cricket, which was moored off Hunstanton Pier. Locals recalled: ‘The ship had an anti-aircraft machine gun, which almost deafened the residents, and awakened the dead when it blasted off at overhead Zeppelins.’

  In his article ‘Tradition and the Innovate Talent’ published in The Times on 5 June 1995, William Rees-Mogg pointed out:

  He [Hippisley] was the man who solved the problem of listening to U-boats when they were talking to each on the radio by devising a double-tuning device which simultaneously identified the waveband and precise wavelength. That, it is said, was essential to clearing the Western Approaches in late 1917, when American troops were coming over. Bayntun Hippisley sat in Goonhilly listening to the U-boat captains as they chatted happily to each other in clear German; he told the destroyers where to find them; the food and the Americans got through.

  For his services, Bayntun was awarded the OBE on 3 June 1918. He apparently never told his family what he did during the war, and because he was bound as a gentleman and by the Official Secrets Act he did not write it down either, but suffice to say in his obituary which appeared in The Times on 11 April 1956, Bayntun was described as ‘an almost unique personality’ who ‘inherited a remarkable mechanical and scientific gift, which put him in the forefront, if not ahead, of most of his contemporaries.’ One of the senior officers who had worked with Bayntun remarked that Hippisley ‘was one of the men who really won the war’.

  11/12 September 1915

  LZ-77, commanded by Hauptmann Horn, returned a few days later, passing Kentish Knock light vessel at 10.35 p.m. and travelling north-east towards the coast. She made landfall about 11.10 p.m. south of Tillingham coastguard station. As she passed, rifle fire was opened on her from the coastguard lookout posts at Tillingham and Holiwell Point, without apparent result, except that LZ-77 rose to 5,000ft, and turned slightly south.

  Going on westwards, at 11.15 p.m. she passed ½ mile south of Southminster, where eight rounds were fired at her by a 1-pdr pom-pom. The airship carried on westward passing Latchingdon, where she dropped a petrol tank and then veered north-west to Maldon. She passed south of Maldon at 11.20 p.m. and went south-west to Rettendon. Here, she turned west, passing West Hanningfield at 11.30 p.m., Ingatestone at 11.35 p.m. and a point 2 miles north of Chipping Ongar at 11.40 p.m. At 11.45 p.m., on reaching Gaynes Park, 1½ miles south of North Weald Bassett, LZ-77 turned north-west and, after crossing the main road from Epping to Potter Street, steered due north to Thornwood where she turned towards the east and, circling over North Weald Bassett, crossed her original course at Wintry Wood at 11.50 p.m.

  Here, she dropped fifty-two incendiary bombs (of which five did not ignite), and eight HE bombs (not one of which exploded because, upon examination, none of them had their safety appliances withdrawn) on the Royal Field Artillery camp situated between Wintry Park and Hayles Farm. The airship commander was clearly uncertain of his location, saw lights at Thornwood and probably thought he was over factories or munitions works in the East End of London, so he dropped his bombs and made off. Amazingly, no damage was done and there were no casualties.

  Finding her way back across Essex, LZ-77 turned east along the railway past Thurston towards Elmswell and passed over Great Bardfield at 12.20 a.m. Reaching Bury St Edmunds before 1 a.m. and Wymondham at 1.30 a.m., she was heard approaching Norwich ten minutes later but, owing to fog, could not be observed. The Caister coastguard station next reported the presence of LZ-77 at about 2.05 a.m., travelling very slowly out to sea.

  12/13 September 1915

  LZ-74, commanded by Hauptmann George, was reported going out to sea over Nieuport in Belgium at 7.50 p.m. After spending a considerable time at sea she passed over the Kentish Knock lightship, flying very high, at 10.27 p.m., steering north-west. At 10.45 p.m. she came over the coast near Walton-on-the-Naze and travelled west along the line of the railway over Thorpe-le-Soken, Little Clacton, Weeley and Great Bentley to Wivenhoe, which she passed at 11 p.m. At 11.05 p.m. she reached Colchester and went on in the same north-west direction past Wormingford, where two HE bombs were dropped. These fell in a field, doing no damage. At Mount Bures a third HE bomb fell with the same result.

  LZ-74 then circled over Wakes Colne at 11.15 p.m. and moved north-east. She was seen from Boxted and, at Dedham, turned north-west. At approximately 11.30 p.m. she dropped eleven HE and five incendiary bombs at Hills Farm, Stratford St Mary. One HE bomb did not explode, the rest exploded within 15–70 yards of dwelling houses but only broke some glass in a greenhouse and a skylight, and damaged some fences. The bombs had been attracted by the fire from a Maxim gun armoured car of the RNAS. The LZ-74 was originally going north-west, but when fired upon came around towards the east as though searching for the gun.

  Going eastward, the airship dropped four HE and four incendiary bombs at Ea
st Bergholt, which did no damage. The airship turned north-east, passed Ipswich and was again engaged by a RNAS Maxim car at Rushmere, with the result that, at 11.45 p.m., she dropped four HE bombs, one of which failed to explode. No damage was done. The gunfire caused the airship to take a zigzag course in order to avoid it, as she was flying very low and was described as presenting a ‘splendid mark’.

  Going on in the same north-easterly direction she passed Woodbridge at 11.50 p.m., where she was fired upon by another RNAS Maxim car without effect. Wickham Market was passed at about 11.55 p.m. and she was at Aldeburgh at 12.05 a.m. Here, the airship was again fired at by a RNAS Maxim car. Passing northward along the coast, she drifted for a short distance with engines cut off so as not to attract fire as she had probably thrown all her bombs.

  She went out to sea at Sizewell Gap but came in again, and at 12.15 a.m. was heard south of Blythburgh by a RNAS pom-pom detachment, but was not fired upon as she could not be seen. LZ-74 finally passed out to sea near Southwold at 12.18 a.m. It seems that LZ-74 had difficulty finding any landmarks due to thick ground fog.

  LZ-74 was destroyed shortly afterwards when she ran against a hillside in the Eifel. Her gondolas were torn off and her occupants thrown into a wood. The main body of the airship came down near the German General Headquarters, then at Mézières with one or two men on board who had taken refuge in the gangway.

  13/14 September 1915

  L-14 was commanded by Kapitänleutnant der Reserve Alois Böcker. She was seen off Winterton, Norfolk, at 11.12 p.m., out to sea 25 miles east of Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft at 12.25 a.m. and further south, 18 miles east of Southwold at 12.38 a.m. Her movements were hampered by fog and it is thought that L-14 did not make landfall at all.